US Cable a Stark Reminder of Washington’s Clout in Pakistan
Complicated domestic and international scenario before election
By: Salman Rafi Sheikh
The secret cable published last week by the Intercept quoting Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs advocating Imran Khan’s 2022 exit as prime minister, reflects the stark reality of Pakistan’s ties with Washington. Impressions otherwise, the US is often able to exert pressure on a level where regime change becomes inevitable. It puts a question mark on Pakistan’s autonomy, both internally and externally.
An aggrieved Khan, in a March speech delivered to a charged crowd before his ouster via a vote of no confidence in the parliament, accused Washington of hatching an international “conspiracy” to remove him. Khan appears to have been right.
The revelations have started a fresh round of controversy and furious protest at a time when Khan, who according to opinion polls remains the country’s most popular politician, is in jail on corruption charges, when general elections are due, and when the outgoing foreign minister just claimed to have significantly repaired Pakistan’s ties with Washington, which not only facilitated Pakistan’s access to the International Monetary Fund’s loan program but also helped Islamabad avoid a sovereign default. Pakistan’s improved ties with Washington also helped it avoid the Financial Action Task Force’s blacklist, as well as exiting the grey list.
Although The Intercept was unable to verify the authenticity of the cable, US officials didn’t actually deny its contents, merely saying that Washington had indeed privately expressed its concerns vis-à-vis Khan’s foreign policy. How much public effect it will have is uncertain. Khan for months before his arrest organized massive rallies accusing the US of a conspiracy before cheering crowds of tens of thousands of supporters and complaining over the cable’s existence.
However, it is little wonder that, immediately after Khan’s exit, Pakistan reversed its policy vis-à-vis Russia, with the then-Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa, who Khan said was at the center of a “conspiracy,” even criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine. In a speech delivered at a security conference in Islamabad days before Khan’s exit, Bajwa praised Pakistan’s ties with Washington and reminded his audience that the best weapons Pakistan has were made in the US (not made in Russia or China) and that the US was (and still is) Pakistan’s largest export market.
With the sitting army chief reinforcing the US narrative that the leaked cable explicitly demonstrates, the political role of the military establishment, both domestic and international, also becomes questionably prominent. It is at the center of domestic and international politics, creating a problematic situation for China, one of Pakistan’s biggest investors via the debt-strapped China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), where the durability of its ties with Pakistan weakens as compared to Islamabad’s ties with Washington. The CPEC, a massive complex of ports, roads, electricity generation, and other projects that are a capstone of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, is by far Pakistan’s biggest-ever infrastructure scheme.
For sure, Islamabad doesn’t have a strong political and economic footprint, domestically or internationally, to maintain balanced ties regionally or globally. Even more problematic for China is the Pakistani military’s role. As various Pakistani policymakers I have met over the past few years confirmed, Beijing is uncomfortable with the military’s part in the economy. A key reason why the CPEC lost its momentum during Khan’s tenure was the dominant role of the military in CPEC projects. This was done via the ‘CPEC Authority’ established in 2019 by the Khan regime via a Presidential Ordinance. This authority, until it was abolished by the Shahbaz Sharif government in 2022, was led, for the most part, by Bajwa.
For China, the Pakistani military’s close ties with the US coupled with the military’s predominant role in politics and the economy – which has only increased with the amended Army Act and Official Secrets Act – present a complicated scenario, which may even compromise the CPEC.
The Army Act makes the Pakistan Army a direct economic player, which means the Chinese will have to deal with it, knowing full well that the army owes a lot of its current power to a political/regime change that had US blessings if not its orders. From Beijing’s perspective, the army owes its power to Washington.
The same goes for Pakistan’s ties with Russia, as Islamabad will no longer be interested in pursuing economic ties with Moscow in the immediate future, as Moscow itself is quite unlikely to develop ties with a country explicitly in the US camp.
There is a sense that the army is going to use its dominant political position – which is further strengthened by the fact that its main opponent, Khan, is in jail and has been disqualified for the next five years from politics – to engineer the political landscape in ways that a) bring a pro-army party to power, and b) that can stick to the economic program set by the IMF. In fact, the IMF has already met almost all mainstream parties in Pakistan to elicit guarantees that its program will not be abandoned after the next elections.
To ensure its continuity, the military establishment has been successful in promoting a senator to the position of caretaker prime minister. Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar belongs to the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), established just before the 2018 general elections by the military to sideline nationalist parties in Balochistan. The same party is now being used at the federal level to engineer national-level politics.
With BAP i.e., the military establishment, now in power, there is little denying that Pakistan is comprehensively in the US camp. Although Islamabad’s official position remains ‘neutral’ between Washington and Beijing, the latter cannot be expected to be oblivious to the Pakistani “deep state’s” ties with Washington and how these ties are going to limit the extent to which Beijing itself can influence Pakistan (against the US).
While Pakistan is unlikely to take a position against China (Islamabad owes more than US$30 billion to China), the prospects of its ties with China going any further have become very dark. This is especially critical in the face of the ways international politics is changing, leaving many countries in a situation where choosing global geopolitical camps is becoming inescapable.